ITHACA, N.Y. — For the first time in decades, workers at Cornell University are on strike.
Thousands of students are scheduled to begin moving into Cornell’s campus on Monday for the fall semester, but workers on the night shift began to walk off the job Sunday, when the strike officially started at 10 p.m.. Workers are scheduled to picket on the university’s campus during student move-in day.
The United Auto Workers (UAW) and Cornell University have been locked in tense labor contract negotiations since April. UAW Local 2300 represents a bargaining unit of about 1,200 workers at Cornell, the majority of which are cafeteria workers, custodians, and groundskeepers, whose current bargaining agreement with Cornell expired on July 1.
UAW Local 2300 President Christine Johnson announced the strike on Sunday to dozens of workers and supporters that rallied outside the Cornell CISER building, where Johnson and other union officials had bargained for hours with Cornell representatives.
“They want to see what it looks like when our members walk off the job,” Johnson said. “So we’re going to campus now and we’re telling people that are night shift, put it down.”
In a statement released Monday morning, Cornell Interim Provost John Siliciano and Chief Human Resources Officer Christine Lovely said the university has “continued to negotiate in good faith with the UAW” over a new labor contract. The UAW has continued to reject a proposal to involve a federal mediator in negotiations, according to Cornell.
Siliciano and Lovely said Cornell has contingency plans in place that reduce service levels at its dining halls, in building care, and at the Statler Hotel located on campus. But Siliciano Lovely called the strike “unprecedented territory,” and requested that any staff from across campus that is able to take a “temporary shift or alternative assignment” sign up.
The UAW has sought to secure record wage increases for the workers it represents at Cornell, citing the university’s $10 billion endowment and recent years of healthy revenue.
For the union, other core issues in the contract fight have been to a wage tier-system, introduce cost-of-living-adjustments (COLA), and address the parking challenges that workers have complained about on the university’s campus.
UAW representatives said that in the last round of negotiations, the university broke with its previous offers and would include COLA in the contract. COLA, which is separate from general wage increases, would tie workers’ wages to inflation.
Union representatives said they came down from 45% to a 25% increase in wages over the course of a 4-year contract, with a 10% increase in the first year. Cornell changed its offer from 18.5% over five years, to a 17.5% increase over four years, according to the university.
The average worker in the bargaining unit makes about $22 an hour, according to the UAW. It’s a wage that union officials have said leaves workers, especially those supporting families, struggling to make ends meet.
Maria Dryer, a custodian who’s worked at Cornell for four years, was supposed to clock into work on Sunday night when her night shift started at 11 p.m.. Now she’s striking.
Dryer, a single mom with three teenage children, attended the union’s rally on Sunday outside of the Cornell CISER building. She said she didn’t understand why a wealthy institution like Cornell wouldn’t agree to give its staff the raises union representatives are demanding.
“My daughter, she’s 17, and she has to have a job just so that she can have clothes for school, because she knows I can’t afford it,” Dryer said.
Dryer currently makes $20.85 an hour, plus a shift differential of an additional $1.25 per hour for working nights. She said she works night shifts because of the extra bump in cash. But even with the extra wages, Dryer said, “There’s no way I can live being a single mom. I don’t make enough money, I barely make enough money to survive where I’m at.”
UAW International Representative Lonnie Everett, who is bargaining with university representatives, said he thought Cornell was “full of shit” when asked if he thought they were negotiating in good faith.
“They have their own workers who are struggling and balancing their lives on credit cards when they’re an Ivy League institution and have billions of dollars of endowment and they are making millions of dollars in revenue,” Everett said.
It’s unclear when bargaining between Cornell and the UAW will begin again. UAW representatives said Cornell’s negotiating team told them they would reach out for future talks.
Update (08/19/2024): This story has been updated to include a statement from Cornell University made after publication.
Correction (08/19/2024): A previous version of this article stated that Cornell increased its offer to increase wages from 18.5% over five years, to 19.5% over four years. The change Cornell offered was to increase wages by 17.5% over four years, according to a statement from the university.
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UAW sets move-in day “deadline” for strike amid tense contract negotiations with Cornell